


Hagiography

by ReaperWriter



Series: These Lines Across My Face [6]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Gen, Gwyn Over the Years, Meditations on Prayer, Minor Character Death, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Doubt, Ten Scenes from a Life, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: Hagiography: Writings on the Lives of SaintsTen glimpses into Gwyn's life and her meditations on faith, prayer, and grace.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: These Lines Across My Face [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852702
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	Hagiography

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things that has been interesting about writing Gwyn is that other than Funky Ceili and a few scenes in What The Water Gave Us, we see her through others. Before the story that finishes her arc, she wanted one more chance to speak for herself.
> 
> The rest of the guard either make appearances or are referenced, but this is mostly a glimpse into Gwyn's wider life. If you don't particularly care, you can skip it, and move to the final story in the arc.

I.

She knelt next to her mother in the garden patch out back of her father’s hall, her two braids hanging into the dirt. Her mother’s hands, the fingers so long and fine, worked gently to coax the soil. A little hole. Set a seed. Then cover it over.

“The earth is a gift to us, Gwynog.” Mother’s voice ever sounded like a song. “One God made for us and saved for us with his son our Lord. And so it is for us to care for it. To not take too much game or too many trees from the woods, or too much fish from the streams. To treat it with reverence.”

Reaching over, she took Gwynog’s small hand in hers, showing her how to use her fingers to open a hole and set in a seed. “The earth feels funny, Mama.”

“It does. But just as when we kneel in prayer in church, or at night before we sleep, this is a kind of prayer too.” Her mother reached out, brushing one of her braids back. “Never forget that, Gwynog. God’s love and grace hears us wherever we are. But His wild places are just as holy as the churches men build him.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Her mother leaned back, a hand cradling her swollen, pregnant belly. “There’s my good girl. Come now, we’re finished. Let’s go see what mischief your sister and brothers are up to.”

Gwynog rose and helped her mother up, and followed her away into the day.

II.

“I’ve no desire to kill anyone,” she argued, staring at the blade. “The commandments say…”

“I know what your priest says, little sister,” Hywel interrupted her, taking her hand in his and wrapping it around the leather. “And God willing, you’ll never need to. But even if you would martyr yourself, what of our servants? Or little Dulon, Branui’s daughter. Surely your God give’s grace for sins committed in the protection of others.”

Gwynog, twelve but already committed to her path, frowned. “I would pray upon that.”

“Then do,” said Hywel. “But I find this a kind of prayer myself. When I move with the blade, and let it become one with me, it’s when I feel closest to the divine.”

Hywel never spoke of God as she did, and maybe he didn’t believe as she did. Some didn’t, holding for the old Gods. She’d feared for him, at first, but the Holy Mother had said not to. That good men were known, regardless of how they came to know God.

“Take this stance,” he said, showing her. His arm came up easily, while Gwynog struggled with her blade, heavy in her arm. “A little higher. Good. You’re already better at this than Myfanwy was at your age.”

“I’ve never seen Myfanwy carry a blade,” Gwynog pointed out as Hywel moved her feet. 

“Her husband doesn’t like it.” Hywel’s voice changed as he spoke of their eldest sister. “Doesn’t approve.”

“Oh.” She didn’t care for Ynyr, her sister’s husband much.

“Since you say you shall have no husband, I’ve no such concern teaching you. Now pay attention.”

By the afternoon, she could follow the basics of the simple drills. And there was a rhythm to it. A cadence, not unlike the prayers the priest intoned in Latin during the Mass she heard each week. Her father had indulged her, paying the priest a stipend to come and teach her, and she understood most of the Latin in the mass now. 

As she stepped through the drills, blade in her hands slicing through the air, the words of prayer echoed through her head in time.

III.

They had prayed in the little house of holy women she had founded. In the morning and again at night, and they had prayed especially on the Sabbath. But outside of those morning and evening prayers, they showed their faith not on their knees but by the work of their hands, to the good of their house and the people around them. Acts of faith in charity that left their hands calloused and rough.

But here. This house of women in Merovingia, with their Rule of Benedict. Eight times between the rising of one sun and the next. Eight times when whatever task at hand ceased and they all returned to the chapel to kneel in prayer. Never mind if she is in the middle of milking a cow. Or cooking something. Or nearly finished with a complex translation of a document. 

The only tasks she’d been excused for missing prayer for was the treatment of the ill. And only then if they were in extremis. 

“Reverend Abbess,” she’d asks, the first time she’d been reprimanded for putting a task hand ahead of hurrying to get onto her knees on the cold hard stone of the chapel. “Is not all we do here in prayer? By serving the community of sisters and those who see our aid, are we not constantly engaged in the act of living prayer? Can I not say my prayers while I see to the task in my hands?”

Mother Ingoberg gives her a look that could have curdled the milk in her pail. “Sister Gwynog, I know you come from the barbarian islands to the west, and that the work of the church there is in its infancy. But such notions are dangerously close to heresy. Banish them. And do not let this be a problem again.”

She swallows down the insult to her people and her understanding of her faith. She’d not told this oh so superior Reverend Abbess that while she might pray to her Christ, Gwynog talked to him. Ingoborg would probably have her burned as a heretic.

“Yes. Of course. My apologies.”

“You will keep a vigil of prayer tonight between Compline and Matins. As penance.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. Perhaps it's time to move on, back into the world. Where she can do good without anyone’s permission. “Yes, Reverend Abbess.”

IV.

She learns languages as she goes, a talent that started with the church’s Latin, but continues as she moves east and east again. Sometimes she stops places for a while, earning her keep serving in noble houses as a companion to their daughters. Sometimes she studies with local midwives, a second pair of hands and a willing mind in exchange for a place to sleep and a bit of food.

She learns to birth children and help their mothers. She learns things beyond what she already knew. How to stitch wounds and concoct new medicines. How to reset broken bones and dislocated joints. The farther east she goes, the more willing men are to help her learn. Everywhere, a willing worker is welcome. Even where faiths differ.

She spends time among those who keep the original faith of her Lord, and among those who keep a new faith, one of a prophet called Muhammad. And others still, Zororastrians with their worship involving fire and those who worshiped an older form of Animism. 

She’d long ago learned that it was not her place to elevate her faith above others, merely to live in example of it- be of help, spread love and kindness, offer grace in sadness. 

And accept joy in return.

“Come dance with us,” Amina cries, taking Gwyn’s hands and pulling her forward into the circle of women.

“I don’t know how,” she argues, laughing. 

“You don’t have to know, you just have to feel it.”

And she does. The rhythm of the other women pulls her along, moving through their hands and the pounding their feet on the hard packed earth. The drums echo in her chest and the singing in her head, and this too is like prayer, this wild ecstatic movement and spreading communal joy. 

This is also divine in the same way prayer on her knees in a church is. Or sinking her hands into dirt is.

Gwyn laughs aloud, and stomps along.

V.

This too is prayer, she thinks, her hands covered in blood as Nicolo holds up a lamp for her and Yusuf guards the flap of the tent. The boy is young, so young. Too young to die, and perhaps he won’t.

He cries out and he struggles, Quỳnh holding his legs down while Andromache’s strong hands grip his arms and her words whisper in the boy’s ear.

The blade went through and missed bone and artery, all the hidden mysteries they showed her at Salerno. But it carried pieces of cloth and leather into the wound and those cannot stay. Not unless she wants to save him from bleeding only to lose him to rot.

Holy Mother, guide my hands, as she plucks out bits and pieces, flushing the cut with clean water as she digs. Help me save the life of this child of God.

Eventually, pain and exhaustion quiet the boy, and he goes limp, his labored breathing the benediction that says to keep working.

It is hours and a thousand prayers, stitches and cauterization, poultices against rot and a tincture of poppy in wine against the boy’s lips to bring deep healing sleep.

Dawn is coming before she steps back to find Yusuf with a pitcher and a ewer, ready to wash the blood from her hands.

As it flushes away, leaving her clean, she thinks, this too is prayer.

VI.

This too is grace, as she strides across this field too strewn with bodies, humanity once again eating itself alive like an ouroboros. So many bodies and among them her loved ones who she has followed here, believing she might bring peace in the wake of death. Her brothers and sisters would rise again, unless called home. But these others.

There is peace in her hand as she looks at the man she can’t possibly save, bleeding from too many wounds. None of them immediately fatal. All of them are ultimately fatal. His eyes are kind. Gentle. His weapon ragged with age. A farmer, probably, conscripted to fill out the ranks. Or someone desperate enough to hope the wage of war would pay better than peace.

“Please,” he gasps in the local tongue, changed in the few hundred years since she last passed this way. “Help me.”

Sinking to her knees in the mud and the blood and the shit beside him, she lifts him as gently as she can into her lap, stroking the wheat blonde hair exposed now that the coif has fallen away. “You’re dying. I cannot save you.”

“It hurts so much. Please.”

“What is your name?”

“Johannes.”

“I’m Gwyn.” She speaks the words in his language, not in Latin. The rites to match the sad little cross at this throat. The words to carry him home. She speaks them quickly, as he breathes raggedly against her.

As she finishes, she slides the small, sharp knife in her hand into the artery in his throat, opening it quick and clean.

His eyes go wide in shock and surprise.

“Go to God, Johannes. Rest in peace.”

It takes mere moments for the light in his eyes to go out. She reaches down, closing them gently. Then she slides him to the ground.

This is grace too.

VII.

This too is prayer, the first time she drowns. The lake is cold, the waters still and silent. She sinks down, down, down, naked save to the knife strapped to her leg and the rope around her ankles binding her to the rock. There are fish, curious of her, and turtles. She sees them as she comes awake and then drowns again.

She doesn’t scream. In those minutes when her body resets the cycle, she asks why. Why Paris? Why Quỳnh? Why so many years? Why her? Why choose her at all when every other like her has been on a warrior’s path?

Why not leave her a martyr to her faith at her first death, buried silently and left to the grave?

Why make her a counter point when it seems nothing she can do counters any of this? The death. The destruction. The cruelty and the loss and the agony and the despair.

Why not give her one small thing now, for her centuries of faithful service?

Why not give her sister to her? Let her save Andromache’s soul from despair. Let her save Quỳnh from torture and a hideous final death someday. Let her bring back the unbridled joy in Nicolo and Yusuf.

Why, oh my God, my Lord and Husband, why Oh Holy Mother, why have you forsaken me?

Why?

She drowns, and she drowns, and she drowns, and she doubts, until she cannot take it. Until her hand reaches for the knife and the knife cuts the rope and she kicks weakly to the surface and swims for the shore.

She doubts, and in that there is prayer too.

VIII.

There is prayer in the wooden clapboard church with all it’s windows open and a fan in every hand. She stands out, she knows, far too pale and tucked away in the back corner. But everyone has been kind. So kind when she came with the two young men and the young woman she’s been driving from up north, the ones who have distant kin here.

Safer for them to be with a woman who looks like her, traveling through this part of the country. Safer if the three of them sit in the back while she and Morty, the other white volunteer, ride in the front. Morty’s back at their hosts, having observed his sabbath already.

But there is prayer here, and it’s been so long since she heard it, the songs sung a century ago when she last passed through. When her dresses were longer, her hair was longer, but her rebellion against injustice and brutality just as fiery in her soul. Songs of abiding in God. Of letting God guide you home. Sometimes in death. Sometimes by running for freedom.

The urgency is still there, the aching and the pain. Freedom became a matter of degrees, and it burns in that part of Gwyn’s heart that Paris left so blackened and charred. So many centuries on, humanity should be better.

Instead, she opens her mouth, quietly singing along. The woman next to her smiles.

“Sing louder, honey. Let the Lord hear you.”

“Yes, m’am.”

So she does. And that’s prayer too.

IX.

This is prayer. Sitting in this room which used to be hers, in this house that used to be hers. The bed has changed. Now, it’s a hospital bed, for the ease of the occupant and those caring for him. His beautiful wife. Their beautiful children.

They all know the secret. That Dad’s great niece Winnie is really Gwyn. The woman who brought him into her home and let him be his true self. Who loved him like he was her own child, who gave him aunts and uncles who have loved him and looked out for him his whole life. Who became Mum after a while.

Winnie, who paid for university and veterinary school, gave him the croft and had the large animal hospital built. Who welcomed Evain into the family, and every child they adopted, popping up at Christmases and birthdays and for visits.

Dragging with her Uncle Sébastien or Auntie Nile, Auntie Quỳnh and Auntie Andy, Uncle Manvir and Aunt Bargitta, or Uncle James or Uncles Joe and Nicky.

Paying for school for the grandchildren when they needed help. And loving them. Loving them all. It’s the great family secret.

Today, in the fading light, it’s just Uncle Sébastien, his arms wrapped around Evain’s shoulders as she holds one hand and clutches her daughter close.

Gwyn hold’s Ioan’s other with her grandsons tucked into her sides.

“Mum?” Ioan whispers.

“I’m here, darling boy. We’re all here.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Evain sobs.

“That’s wonderful, my heart. That means it’s time to go. Sébastien and I, we will make sure Evain and the children are alright.” She looks up at her brother, his eyes as flooded with tears as her own. “We love you, Ioan. Peace goes with you. Traveling mercies. Until we see you again.”

“I love you, baby,” Evain whispers, bending over and pressing a kiss to Ioan’s cheek.

He takes a few more breaths. Each slower than the last. And then he’s gone.

This too is prayer, even when it hurts.

X.

She spends an hour each night on her knees. It is an old habit, older than the building her rooms are in. Older than the country going to hell around her. Older than versions of languages she tutors the children on both sides of this political divide in as she tries to subtly work at their parents, to nudge them on a path to peace and away from bloodshed. Old like her. And she is so old. 

She has buried children of her heart and grandchildren. Friends and accidental husbands. Family, scattered in ash on what remains of the Scythian steppes. She has seen places she loved fall to ruin. Be subsumed by concrete, only for it to crack away. Bombs destroy it, oceans rise over it. 

She is tired, aching in soul if not in body.

She is lonely, even if her Lord and his Mother still come to her in her dreams.

When they don’t, she dreams of Cymru. Of old land holds and wat and dauble churches. Of waterfalls into clear pools chilled ice cold with mountain snows. Of her sister and her brothers, her mother and father. Of running her hands through its earth.

It is the kind of homesickness that nothing can cure, because she can’t turn back time. Can’t go back to that home, those people. They are so much ash and dust, and she remains.

She stands, unsteady. Her legs have gone to sleep from kneeling. Her hand grabs the nightstand and the glass on it teeters on the edge and falls, shattering on the floor.

“Feck.”

She could ring for a servant, one lower in the chain than a highly regarded linguistics tutor. But it is late and she won’t rouse people from their beds.

She manages to get all the pieces safely into the trash, save one.

It takes its payment in blood.

A cut along her pointer finger. Gwyn watches it, expecting it to shrivel to nothing.

It bleeds.

It bleeds.

It bleeds.

Red drops fall on her white nightgown, drying as she keeps staring.

Oh. 

Perhaps dreams are also a prayer, one she didn’t know she was praying.

A prayer being answered.

She needs to make ready.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. When I started writing Gwyn, I never imagined that she'd be with me for more than one story, let alone a novel's worth of words. I also never expect that writing her would help me through some of the roughest weeks I've been through in my adult life, or that she'd resonate so much with other people.
> 
> I came to love her, and saying good bye to her is going to hurt. Hagiography is the second to last story. Her finale is already written. I might post it tonight. 
> 
> I have some other TOG ideas percolating. I won't be going away.
> 
> Thank you for those of you have have been reading this series. Your comments and kudos and even just read numbers have meant the world.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as TheAdventureofHistoryGirl, or on The Old Guard Discord as BiSwampWitchAuntie. Feel free to come say hello.


End file.
